Suman Talukdar is Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC.
Sramana Mitra: Talk a little bit about the unicorns in your portfolio. Venktesh Shukla: Let’s talk about three different categories I mentioned that we invest in. We have a unicorn or soon-to-be unicorns in all those three things. We are invested in a cloud infrastructure company called Aviatrix.
Sramana Mitra: My next question is something that we touched upon a little bit when we spoke some time ago. In the fund strategy, one of the things we’re seeing is that there is a class of funds that is still focused on finding unicorns. They are looking for the very large billion-dollar opportunities, but
Sramana Mitra: If you were to look back on the 30 companies that you invested in, which ones are concept-stage ventures that you have invested in without anything already built? Venktesh Shukla: Practically every one of them. Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. That’s actually unique. I’m going to give you some feedback on what’s happening in
Sramana Mitra: I am very intellectually curious. I feel very humbled with how little I know about all these segments that we are working with. At the same time, there are methodology elements that we have come up with in doing this for such a long time that apply to a lot of different scenarios.
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Venktesh Shukla is General Partner at Monta Vista Capital. I have known Venk for more than 20 years, and we discussed both industry trends and his fund strategy.
Sramana Mitra: What are your predictions on post-COVID trends? What are you seeing and predicting? What kind of businesses would you like to invest in the post-COVID era? Fabrice Grinda: Crises, in general, are extraordinary accelerators of underlying trends. They are also extraordinary generators of productivity growth. If you examine the 20th century, the Great
Sramana Mitra: It sounds like your strategy is to go for the unicorns, is that right? Fabrice Grinda: Yes and no. With all of the companies that we invested in, we want them to have the control to be a billion-dollar company. If you are building a venture startup, you need to be able to